Identification cards, such as credit cards, driver's licenses, and similar identifying instruments, have employed a variety of means to avoid counterfeiting and to properly identify an individual involved in a particular transaction. In order to avoid the use of such identification cards by individuals who are not legitimate cardholders, an image, frequently in color, of the cardholder is applied to the card or other instrument to permit the recognition of the legitimate owner of the card or other instrument at the time that the card is utilized to identify the legitimate owner of the card.
Such images are generally made by video imaging input to a computer. The image may, thereafter, be placed on a card or other instrument having descriptive text printed thereupon by a selected conventional process. More recently, as the art of symbology has advanced, it has been suggested that symbol technology comprising characteristic parameters of the image of the cardholder be stored on the identification card in proximity to the image, U.S. Pat. No. 5,505,494.
This permits the identification of the cardholder to be verified by scanning or viewing the image of the cardholder, thereby re-determining the characteristic parameters of the cardholder and comparing the same with the parameters of the corresponding symbology on the card. Therefore, the alteration of the card by the substitution of an image other than the original image is ineffective because of the subsequent comparison of the substituted image with the original symbology.
Also exemplary of such a prior art identification card is that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,179,686, entitled "System for Checking the Authenticity of Identification Paper" issued Dec. 8, 1979.
The symbology is created by scanning the image or by utilizing video and computer technology to record the image of the cardholder or the actual image presented when the cardholder applies for the issuance of the card. In substitution for or in addition to the symbology mentioned above, an RFID (radio frequency identification) circuit can be utilized. Such identification means are related to a particular card or document holder bearing the image and the encoded corresponding symbology which will approximately reproduce the image.